VietNamNet Bridge – The coach of Vietnam’s national football squads, Henrique Calisto,must bring the U23 team at least to the finals of the 26^th Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in 2011, otherwise his contract with the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) may expire one year earlier.

 

This was the goal set by the VFF for Calisto and his team at a meeting on January 27 to seek reasons for the failure of the team at the recent Southeast Asian Championship (AFF Cup).

 

At the meeting, experts pointed out some major reasons: the national team convened for too long (3 months) causing harmful psychological effects on the players, the team’s tactics were no longer secret, and coach Calisto’s mistakes.

 

After the failure, some said VFF should finish its 3-year contract with Calisto. The public expected the meeting between VFF, Calisto and the National Coaching Council to analyze the failure.

 

Calisto accepted responsibility for the failure but he said he didn’t manage to leave the team. The National Coaching Council partly took the responsibility because it didn’t advise VFF to timely intervene in Calisto’s mistakes in personnel.

 

Calisto and VFF didn’t totally agree with these points. Calisto said that personnel is the major factor that led to the failure of Vietnam at AFF Cup 2010. “I didn’t have good strikers. Cong Vinh was injured, Viet Thang couldn’t play until the last game, and many key players didn’t perform well. As the current champion, rivals paid special attention to Vietnam so we couldn’t surprise them,” the coach analyzed.

 

Though Vietnam couldn’t defend its AFF championship, VFF was still satisfied with the national team because Calisto’s students played stably and played well at all matches but it was defeated because it lacked its best players and some individual players made mistakes.

 

VFF said that 2010 was a success for the U23 team because for the first time Vietnam entered the second round of the Asian Games.

 

In 2010, Calisto worked overtime to lead both the national and U23 squads. However, VFF still maintains its viewpoint of giving both teams to Calisto this year. However, Calisto needs good assistants, now a big difficulty because the best Vietnamese coaches have joined local clubs and VFF can’t afford to pay high salaries to hire them.

 

This year the national football squad, including the national team and the U23 team, will compete at three major events – the SEA Games, the qualifier round of the 2012 Olympics in London and the qualifier round of the World Cup 2014.

 

At the Olympic and World Cup qualifier rounds, Vietnamese teams only need to play as best as they can but at the SEA Games 2011, Vietnam targets to enter the final.

 

Learning from the failure at the ASEAN Football Cup 2010, national squads will group up for a shorter period of time.  U23 team will not practice overseas before the SEA Games in Indonesia. But the team will participate in some friendly tournaments at home like the VFF Cup and HCM City Cup.

 

The U23 squad will have many young players who will come from the U19 team, newly emerging talents from local clubs and some overseas Vietnamese players. The VFF plans to recruit overseas Vietnamese talent for the team.

 

The goal to enter the SEA Games 2011 final is mild for Calisto. “If he can’t achieve this goal, his contract may expire one year early,” said a VFF official.

 

Calisto led the Vietnam national squad in 2002 and won a bronze medal at Tiger Cup 2002. In 2008 he brought the team to the championship of Southeast Asia. In March 2010, he signed a 3-year contract with the VFF.

 

PV